A ‘toxic tour’ of UK government departments on Monday (28 October 2002) highlighted lack of action to prevent breast cancer. Organisers Women’s Environmental Network also used the event to call for the annual awareness month to be renamed ‘Breast Cancer Prevention Month’ to reflect the fact that women don’t want to get the disease in the first place.
Tour Guide Ms Monique Toxique exposed her left breast and much more as she led campaigners around Whitehall calling on the Government to take ‘joined up’ action to prevent the disease. A quiz exposed how little the public know about the extent of environmental links and how little research money – just 2% of the total - is spent investigating how to prevent cancer. Campaigners exposed how the Health, Trade & Industry and Environment departments had failed to take action to reduce the ever-rising number of cases of breast cancer. For instance, last year the Department of Trade and Industry persuaded Labour MEPs to vote against a European Union agreed document to phase out chemicals which accumulate in our bodies and possibly contribute to breast and other cancers. Campaigners placed blue plaques stating ‘breast cancer prevention doesn’t live here’ at each site, including the Houses of Parliament.
Helen Lynn, WEN’s health co-ordinator, said: “Women are well aware of breast cancer – what we want is action to stop it before it starts. The number of women getting breast cancer has been going up every year for at least 50 years and it’s now the most common form of cancer in the UK. Advances in treatment and early detection mean women live longer after diagnosis ...but good as they are, such advances are neither prevention nor cure. The ever-widening gap between the number of deaths and the number of new cases means there is no room for complacency. Women’s lifetime chances of getting breast cancer in the UK have risen from one in 12 to one in nine in just five years yet more than 50% of all cases remain unexplained.”
“What we really need is to reduce the risky chemicals and other environmental factors contributing to the rising numbers. It’s time government stopped colluding with the chemical and pharmaceutical industries in the myth that breast cancer is inevitable – it’s not. Precautionary action could stop it before it starts.”
Breasts are big business: each October women give millions of pounds for research yet as a National Cancer Research Institute report published last week (21/10/02) states, little of it is spent on primary prevention. Only two percent of UK cancer research funding is directed at prevention.
The Department of the Environment is responsible for the government’s chemicals strategy and pollution controls; Department of Health manages health policy and could direct more research towards primary prevention; Trade & Industry regulates the drug and chemical industries and consumer issues; while in House of Commons, MPs could introduce new legislation to enforce the precautionary approach.
[More photos and details are available at www.wen.org.uk.
Full press release attached.

Photo caption: ‘Toxic tour’ guide, ‘Monique Toxique’ and Women’s Environmental Network exposed the UK Department of Trade & Industry’s failure to help phase out chemicals that possibly contribute to the rising breast cancer rate. Please use this photo but credit Women’s Environmental Network and photographer Janie Airey (and send us (WEN) a cutting/link to your site so we can keep track of coverage).]